


Six Hundred Fifty Full Moons or So

by Mireille



Category: Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Genre: Community: maleslashminis, M/M, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2007-09-02
Updated: 2007-09-02
Packaged: 2019-03-17 23:09:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 977
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13669227
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mireille/pseuds/Mireille
Summary: Every month, Xander tells himself he's too old for this.





	Six Hundred Fifty Full Moons or So

Every month, he tells himself he's too old for this. This isn't the book cage in the library; they have an actual  _cell_  in their basement, courtesy of the Council because their job has the weirdest perks  _ever_. Oz isn't going anywhere, even if he loses control.   
  
Oz doesn't lose control. He only lets the wolf out for one night, not three, and only when he's safely in the cage. He only lets the wolf out at all because they found a guy who'd been doing this for fifty years, and he convinced Oz it was safer in the long run to let it out every now and then.   
  
So one night a month, unless there's a crisis they can't ignore for twelve hours, Oz lets Xander lock him into the cell. And one night a month, Xander drags out a pile of pillows and sleeps on them, just a few feet away from the bars.   
  
It was easier ten years ago--the sleeping on the floor part, anyway. Nothing else had been easy then.   
  
Ten years ago was about six months into the him-and-Oz thing, and that was back when Xander was still calling it just that: a "thing." They were friends. They ran the Cleveland office together. They had known each other for a long time. And just because they had sex on a pretty regular basis, Xander had argued, didn't mean that anything had really changed between them.   
  
Xander really hadn't wanted them to have changed. Oz wasn't just his friend; he was his best friend's ex, and even if they'd broken up in 1999--not to mention that Willow was a lesbian now--it had felt like he'd be stealing Oz from her. And that wasn't even getting into how it felt like he was cheating on Anya.   
  
Then Oz had started having problems controlling his wolf, and Xander had put a call through to Giles. They'd had J.J. Banks, a seventy-four year-old werewolf from Elko, Georgia, sleeping in the spare room for a month while he helped Oz understand some of the stuff he'd missed by learning how to meditate the wolf into silence.   
  
They'd already had the cage in the basement, just in case, and the night of the first full moon after Mr. Banks had gone home, Oz had gone down there after dinner without a single word to Xander. He could lock himself in without the key, and Xander would come down to let him out in the morning.   
  
But Oz had been paler and quieter than usual, even. Xander didn't think of himself as the sharpest guy ever, but even he had recognized "freaked out and trying to hide it." So after he'd washed the dishes, he'd dragged down a couple of pillows and a blanket and made himself a nest on the floor, just outside of paw's reach.   
  
Mr. Banks had taught Oz some tricks they hadn't known in Tibet: how to let the wolf out and still keep some level of control. Not a lot--werewolves weren't like real wolves, and they didn't have to be hungry or threatened to attack--but enough for him to recognize people who were important to Oz, people he wanted to keep safe. And when Xander had settled down under his blanket with a soft, "'Night, Oz," the wolf had settled down as well, recognized it wasn't getting out of its cage tonight, and gone to sleep.   
  
Oz had woken up the next morning saying that he hadn't realized that he was missing the wolf, like there'd been this huge part of him he'd been repressing, and letting it out--even for just one night, even in the cage--had felt good.   
  
Xander was almost sure that hadn't been some kind of a subtle hint, but that afternoon while Oz went out to restock the refrigerator, he'd called Willow and told her about him and Oz. By seven o'clock, Cleveland time, Oz had taken the house phone off the hook and turned off their cell phones because, he said, Xander's look of panic every time one of their friends called to interrogate him had stopped being cute about three calls ago.   
  
But that had been ten years ago. A hundred and thirty full moons, give or take a couple of apocalypses when they needed Oz to hold on to his humanity. Oz says letting the wolf out still works, says the other two wolf-nights are easier to get through now than they used to be.   
  
Xander, on the other hand, wakes up after full-moon nights with a sore back and a stiff neck, and the bad knee he got cleaning out a nest of demons in the warehouse district has a tendency to lock up on him. And every morning, while he's stretching and grumbling and wishing that just  _once_  he'd remember to bring down a thermos of coffee, he reminds himself that Oz could do this just fine on his own. It's not like when they were locking him in the library; he doesn't need to be watched.   
  
And Oz wouldn't mind. He tells Xander, every month, that there's no reason Xander should have to stay with him, when there's a warm bed upstairs and nobody to elbow him in the side when he starts to snore. Xander has to admit that the man has a point.   
  
Then Oz wraps himself around Xander as soon as he's out of the cage, his nose buried in Xander's shoulder and his arms settled around Xander's waist, and Xander wonders who he's fooling; next month he's going to be sleeping down here again.   
  
But maybe he ought to think about investing in a Barcalounger sometime between now and then. He's not getting any younger, after all, and there'll be a lot of full moons in the next forty years or so.

**Author's Note:**

> [me on tumblr](https://mireille719.tumblr.com)


End file.
